Meet Kirk: co-founder, CEO, entrepreneur, avoider of spotlights but we made him do this anyway.

1. What brought you to create Wave? There are actually a couple of answers to this.

The first answer is all about the specific domain. I’m like most small business owners — in my earlier entrepreneurial days, I had no real experience or desire to do tasks like accounting. So I knew what that pain felt like. Flash forward to about 2009: It was the dawn of cloud computing, and technology was making new things possible. My friend and co-founder James had a background in accounting technology and we shared the same vision about liberating small business owners from these painful tasks. All these things came together in the right mix to give birth to Wave.

The second, more personal answer, is that I wanted to wake up in the morning and feel charged up about the day ahead of me. Life is too short to spend it uninspired. I wanted to surround myself with smart people working on something meaningful. So rather than wait for someone else to build that future, we built it ourselves, starting with a handful of people who wanted to be part of the adventure that continues today.

2. What's the best part of your job? Every day we get better. Our products keep improving and expanding. Our team grows, and the people learn new ways to do things, solve new problems, get smarter. Don't get me wrong: nothing comes without effort. A lot of what we do is hard and has involved overcoming significant challenges. It's an extraordinary thing, to see this company and its people continuously move the bar higher and higher.

3. What is something you've learned since joining Wave? There's a tipping point, where a company goes from an organic collection of people, to an organization that needs structures and processes. When we were just 6 people, there were no processes. We all knew what was happening, because each of us had a part of every conversation that happened. Somewhere between 6 and 60, that stops working.
I didn't realize how much effort goes into managing a company's growth so that you don't lose everything that's great about the scrappy startup feel, mentality and culture. Luckily, we've learned, we've hired a great team that's devoted precisely to managing that cultural balance, and we're super conscious of making sure that we continue to be the company we want to be, as we continue adding new Wavers at a rapid rate.

4. What would you tell someone interested in joining the team? Bring your passion. Bring your A-game. Bring your contribution because everyone at Wave owns the responsibility of creating our future. Be your authentic self because we value diversity of thought and approach.

The people who flourish best at Wave are those who bring their ingenuity and creativity to all the challenges they confront, whether that's building an extraordinary corporate culture or building amazing products for our customers. When you see something that can be made better, step up and be part of the solution — you own the culture and the future of Wave as much as I do.

#teamWave

Composed of some of the smartest minds in North America —more than 100 and counting — the Wave team is innovative, diverse, driven, and incredibly talented. They're also some of the nicest, most interesting, creative, and inspiring people around.